Development of the Illinois career readiness scale for college students with disabilities

Abstract

Despite the association between higher earnings and increased opportunities of employment with post-secondary education, the transition to employment is found to be difficult for college graduates with disabilities. The Illinois Career Readiness Scale (ICRS) was developed to address the career awareness and readiness levels of college students with disabilities. A goal of the ICRS is to address the career development needs and assist students with disabilities in the process of making more informed decisions in their career planning. The ICRS was developed based on the Cognitive Information Processing Theory (Peterson et al., 1991) and the Illinois Work and Well-Being Model (Strauser et al., 2015). The internal consistency was investigated, followed by construct validity by examining the relationship of subscales with appropriate correlational instruments. Multiple linear regression analyses were conducted to determine relationships between subscales of the ICRS and other variables. Preliminary results suggest initial support for the utilization of the ICRS as an instrument to measure an individual’s self-reported career readiness levels.